Place Cell

Place Cell

Place cells are neurons in the hippocampus that exhibit a high rate of firing whenever an animal is in a specific location in an environment corresponding to the cell's "place field". These neurons are distinct from other neurons with spatial firing properties, such as grid cells, border cells, head direction cells, and spatial view cells. In the CA1 and CA3 hippocampal subfields, place cells are believed to be pyramidal cells, while those in the dentate gyrus are believed to be granule cells.

Place cells were first described in rats by O'Keefe and Dostrovsky. Based on this discovery, O'Keefe and Nadel hypothesized that the primary function of the rat hippocampus is to form a cognitive map of the rat's environment. Ekstrom and colleagues have found cells with similar properties in the human hippocampus, using extracellular recordings from epilepsy patients undergoing invasive monitoring of their brain activity.